Every year on December 10, when the Nobel Committees present their awards, they highlight some of the most important achievements and changes in our reality. Some make us hopeful, like advances in medicine, others fill us with anxiety, like the return of the spectre of nuclear war. Researchers from the University of Gdańsk talk about who won the Nobel Prize in 2024 and the direction the world of culture, science, and politics is heading.
il. Niclas Emelhed
After a 16-year break, a Nobel Prize for institutional economists
'The research of the prize winners will probably not affect the fate of the world. If it did, the countries of sub-Saharan Africa would have long since achieved stable growth prospects. Contemporary political processes, unfortunately, resort to polarisation, building antagonisms, and destroying institutions, as long as it offers short-term benefits. And this is why institutional economics is needed as a kind of voice of conscience, even if only as a cry in the wilderness.'
- prof. dr hab. Jacek Zaucha
il. Niclas Emelhed
‘For our purposes, let's imagine a protein as an excavator...’
'Let's focus on proteins - the subject of this year's Nobel Prize. In the simplest terms, we can think of them as small (size 2-100 nm (1nm=10-9m)), highly specialised nanorobots. Some will build our muscles and be responsible for their movement, others will repair damaged tissues, and others will be responsible for digesting food and even for the process of seeing and perceiving our surroundings. Thus, without proteins, no living organism can exist. Even viruses, which can hardly be called ‘alive’, are also made up of proteins. This is why learning about them is so important.'
- dr hab. Artur Giełdoń, prof. UG
il. Niclas Emelhed
‘Debates have flared up anew as to whether the world is in danger of a global nuclear war’
'The choice of this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate was not accidental and should not come as a surprise. Although almost eighty years have passed since the dropping of the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the topic has by no means lost its topicality - on the contrary, since the outbreak of full-scale war in Ukraine, discussions have flared up anew as to whether the world is threatened by a global nuclear war.'
- dr hab. Arkadiusz Modrzejewski, prof. UG
il. Niclas Emelhed
‘The 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature reflects the change that has taken place in the way the award is given’
'Han Kang's prose - elegiac in its tone, being a painful meditation on the fragility of life spent in historical violence and portraying human behaviour in the face of extreme situations - nevertheless also tries to find the sources of human dignity, heroism, and solidarity.'
- dr Bartosz Dąbrowski
il. Niclas Emelhed
Prof. Krzysztof Liberek comments on this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry
'Demis Hassabis and John Jumper created the AlphaFold2 programme, which, using artificial intelligence, predicts the three-dimensional structure of proteins based on their amino acid sequence. AlphaFold2 predicts the structure of proteins with significantly higher probability than previously existing computer programmes. The database of structures predicted by this programme contains approximately 200 million proteins. Importantly, these structures are available to researchers and commercial companies. Knowledge of the three-dimensional structures of proteins is the basis for understanding their functions and is of great importance for modern biotechnology and medicine, including in the design of new drugs.'
- prof. dr hab. Krzysztof Liberek
il. Niclas Emelhed
'Mean physicists may point out that this year's prize resembles that of 1912'
'In addition to the physical inspiration behind artificial neural network models, the Committee emphasises their application in other scientific fields. In particular, the use of artificial neural networks makes it possible to simulate physical systems with the accuracy to predict the structure and dynamics of new materials or to increase the accuracy of climate models without excessive use of computing power to perform calculations. Deep neural networks are also being used to predict the three-dimensional structures of proteins.'
- dr Paweł Mazurek